


Even This Twilight

by 2amEuphoria



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort Reading, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Role Reversal, Romantic Fluff, Slow Burn, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22321405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2amEuphoria/pseuds/2amEuphoria
Summary: “I thought I’d read to you tonight, to help you sleep.”“A bedtime story? What am I, five?”“Nope; something much, much worse.”Pre-relationship, hurt/comfort with a twinge of role reversal. It’s everything you guys want.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 8
Kudos: 91





	Even This Twilight

**Author's Note:**

> This fic wouldn’t exist without my personal fanfic cheerleader @morningssofgold, so you guys should thank her. Seriously, she’s one hell of a brainstorming partner.

She groans when she spots his shit-eating grin through the peephole in her door.

“What do you want, loser?”

He chuckles under his breath as she unlocks the deadbolt to meet him.

“Gil thought I should check up on you,” he remarks, raising the takeout box to her eye level as he shrugs.

It’s almost midnight, but he’s still in the same royal blue suit he’d been wearing around 7:30 this morning. This morning, when she was shot. 

Dani’s cockiness had gotten the better of her. The perp had taken off, and she thought her combat boots had enough traction to help her take off after him in the inch of snow that covered the ground. The elements turned out to not be an issue at all- it was her, not realizing he’d hidden behind one of the shipping containers and saw an opportunity to fire at her when she’d been looking the other way.

She’s still trying to repress the memories that followed after-the smell of gunpowder that overwhelmed her nose, how she’d been thrown backwards like she’d been hit by a train. How JT called the perp a string of profanities and took off after him while Gil and Malcolm rushed to her side. How both of them kept pressure on her for reasons she couldn’t quite comprehend. How Malcolm squeezed her hand tighter when the shock wore off and reality returned as the EMTs held her down in the ambulance. 

The bullet tore through her collarbone but shockingly made a clean exit; Gil had gone back to the scene and picked it up three feet away from where her blood still coated the earth. In the hospital he’d promised her he’d give it to her one day, but that “now wasn’t the time.” After discharging herself AMA at 10pm and fighting through flashbacks on her way home, she couldn’t help but agree with him. Now wasn’t the time to remember.

And yet, this dorky, cheery profiler, still in the suit he was been wearing when he promised he wouldn’t leave her as she was bleeding out, is making it hard to forget.

“Do you ever shower?” She grumbles, trying not to look at the blood-her blood-that she spies under his fingernails.

“Sometimes. You ever try brushing your teeth in the shower? Feels strange the first time you try it, but it’s surprisingly practical when you’re running late.” Her eyes nearly roll into the back of her head, and he laughs again, casting his eyes to the floor. “Honestly, Dani, we just wanted to make sure you were okay. And I thought Pad Thai might taste a bit better than whatever you’ve been trying to feed yourself with one arm.”

She braces her good arm against the door frame, huffing. She can’t argue with his logic- the soup she’d been eyeing in the back of her cabinet didn’t look that appetizing.

“Fine. Come in.”

_____________

“What’s this song that’s playing? I didn’t take you for the indie, punk rock type.”

His eyes are scanning her apartment at a mile a minute, taking in photographs and décor and furniture and that damn basket of laundry she’d promised herself she’d do when she got home from work today, long before a bullet had a better idea for her evening plans. She can only imagine what he’s deducing from her living space: would he think she couldn’t afford expensive lighting given the floor lamps? Pass judgement on her for the lavender scented plug-in air fresheners in every other electrical socket? What about her stereo, which must’ve been at least $200 cheaper than the one he owned? And she didn’t even want to contemplate whether he’d see her underwear peeking out of that laundry basket.

“It’s Tame Impala,” she answers, fishing silverware out of a drawer in her kitchen. “This is called ‘The Less I Know the Better.’ Which, by the way, is a mantra you should keep in your head right now, Sherlock Freud. Cut the profiling.”

He blushes when he turns to face her. _You better be turning red because I’m teasing you, not because you saw my panties,_ she threatens him in her thoughts. 

“C’mere, John Douglas,* I’m starving.” 

_____________

They make awkward small talk in between forkfuls. He can tell she’s still a little shaken by the incident- he’s tried to stop profiling her living space, but it’s hard not to make deductions from the medical papers and prescriptions she’s shoved underneath a pile of much older papers and letters on her countertop. That, and the subsequent stress signals he sees on her whenever she winces from the pain of her healing wound. It’s as if she’s reliving it all over again whenever she moves her right upper body the wrong way. 

“Speaking of showers from earlier,” he ponders, “have you taken one yet? Outside of the cat bath the nurses gave you in the ER, I mean.”

“I don’t want to deal with that tonight,” she grumbles, staring into her food. “I’m gonna have to cut up plastic trash bags to cover the brace, or stand awkwardly against the shower curtain... It’s too much for today.” She drops her fork into her bowl. “I just want to go to bed now, honestly.”

“O- oh,” he stammers, straightening up. “I’ll head out then. I’m sorry, just thought you might want som-”

“Company?” she finishes for him. His eyes flicker at the mention of the word; it’s hard not to notice when he conveys so much emotion through his face.

She sighs, rubbing her temple. “If I’m completely honest with you, will you promise not to tell Gil and JT that I’m a huge chicken?”

He leans in, expressions growing more serious. “Of course.”

She lets out a long, drawn-out sigh before she opens up to him. “I’m a bit worried about having nightmares... About what happened. I’m scared to sleep alone.”

He blinks. “You know nobody understands that like I do, Dani. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He looks off into her living area for a second before bringing his gaze back to her. “Want me to stay here with you?”

“I’d like that... If you don’t mind, that is.”

“I don’t mind at all,” he replies, straightening up in his chair. “I can run home and change real quick, and I’ll be back in forty-five minutes, if not less.” 

She gives him a soft smile, one that he returns with an enthusiastic grin of his own.

“Sounds good, Bright. I’ll clean things up here; you head home.”

_____________

He’s wearing slippers when he returns.

_Slippers._

After mocking him for his footwear selection, one that he persistently tries to defend (“I was outside just to get in and out of a Lyft; will you let me _live?!”_ ), he reveals his plan to her.

“I thought I’d read to you tonight, to help you sleep.”

“A bedtime story? What am I, five?”

“Nope; something much, much worse.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Poetry.”

She gives him a reaction that reminds him of how Ainsley used to whine and groan when his mother told her that Malcolm had to tutor her in Calculus. He doubles over laughing when she stomps her foot.

“Come _on!_ It’ll be fun!” He tries to tease her to hide his nerves when he realizes she’s asking him to follow her to her bed. “If anything, it’ll put you right to sleep.”

“Worked when I was in sixth grade; maybe we’ll find out if that still holds true.” She crawls over her top sheet, trying to let one arm do the work of two, when she nearly flops over and feels shooting pain ripple up her “bad side.” Malcolm catches her, a hand supporting her waist to keep her from landing on her shoulder. Both of their cheeks remain flushed long after she murmurs “thank you” and they assume their respective spots on her bed.

She picks a pillow, as does he. She lies on her good side, while he rests comfortably on his back, an arm behind his head. For a fleeting moment, they stare at one another in silence.

Dani breaks the tension. “You don’t have a book or something?”

“Oh-” He scrambles to search for something in her sheets. “They’re all on my phone.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah! You can find them on poetry websites for free. Not the same experience as reading them on a paperback, though-”

She’s going to have to keep track of how many times she’s rolled her eyes tonight. “Just read, Bright; I’m exhausted.”

He chuckles, scrolling through his recovered phone. “Okay, okay. I like this one: ‘Soonest Mended’ by John Ashebury.”

“Cool. Give it to me.”

His voice is both captivating and soothing as he goes through the poem. He’s clearly an avid reader given his fluency, but also proficient at reading to _others-_ she can tell from his well-timed prosody and intonation that he’s done this often. She begins to wonder how many nights he’d read to Ainsley when they were children; she imagines his younger sister would’ve been entranced by his narration- that is, until he’d begun to find works as opaque and downright _boring_ as whatever he’s reading to her now.

“Hold on, wait. Stop. What the _hell_ am I listening to?” She props herself up on her good arm, bewildered. “What’s the point of this? What’s the meaning?”

“It’s... Well, it’s kind of about self-reflection,” Malcolm replies. “The narrator’s reflecting on who he is...”

“...You really have no idea either. Quit it.”

He chuckles. Upon further inspection of his face, she can tell from the reflection in his eyes that he’s scrolling through his phone.

“You _nerd._ You’re looking up the meaning!” She scoots closer, her good side on his chest as she tries to steal his phone. Cackling, he holds his phone high out of her reach. They giggle like children, playfully fighting one another for the prize in question.

“Give it! I wanna see proof that Malcolm Bright uses Sparknotes!”

He drops the phone onto the floor, confused when she gasps in horror.

“Well, I see you care about the safety of your phone as much as you care for yourself.” 

“Can’t lie about that,” he groans as he bends over to pick his phone up off her rug.

“Don’t lie to a cop, Bright,” she reaches up to ruffle his hair, and he gives her a smile that makes her wish her heart wouldn’t flutter the way it did. “Now find me something else.”

He settles on “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich, since the narrator’s “exploration” reminds him of a “journey into a deep sleep”- or so he tells her.

“I’m going to cross-examine that, and if I find out you stole that idea from a broke college student with a blog, I’ll end you.”

“I can’t help it if broke college students with blogs have the same interpretations as me.”

“You’re insufferable. Keep reading.”

Neither of them point out that she’s still lying on top of his chest. He wonders if she’s doing so to catch glimpses of him looking up poem meanings on his phone, or maybe she just found this position the most comfortable... Perhaps she preferred his chest to a pillow?

She’s just as unsure as he is about why she’s laying on him, though she wonders if he’s noticed, if he’s reading into it. Should he be? Would he say something? 

All she has to overthink is what happens every 2-4 stanzas, when he peers down at her, and she feels his breathing slow at the sight of her laying with him.

_____________

Piano key strokes pull her out of her dreams. That, and something else.

“We have lost even this twilight.  
No one saw us this evening, hand in hand  
While the blue light dropped on the world.”

His voice is a low hum, as gentle and rhythmic as the classical music playing from his phone.

“I have seen from my window  
The fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.”

She becomes aware of touch against her side, and with half-shut eyes she realizes he’s draped an arm over her waist, the pad of his thumb rubbing circles against her t-shirt. He doesn’t seem to realize she’s awake, so she remains still, letting the rise and fall of his speech and the music and his chest blend together into a soothing soundtrack.

“I remembered you with my soul clenched  
In that sadness of mine that you know. 

Where were you then?  
Who else was there?  
Saying what?  
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly  
When I am sad and feel you are far away?”

She hopes he didn’t notice the way her breath hitches as she realizes he’s reading poetry that so closely aligns with how she feels about him. And, perhaps, how he feels about her. But he continues, the patterns he traces over her remaining constant, his narration undeterred.

She slips back into unconsciousness with the last two lines ringing in her ear:

“Always, always you recede through the evenings  
Towards the twilight erasing statues.”

_____________

“Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because-  
Because, I don’t know how to say it; a day is long  
And I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station  
Where the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

The sound of his voice follows her as she’s pulled once more from sleep to wakefulness. Her senses register a different piano tune-slower, more solemn-and the feeling of his fingertips on her back.

“Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because  
Then the little drops of anguish will all run together,  
The smoke that roams looking for a home will drift  
Into me, choking my lost heart.”

 _If only you knew,_ she thinks. _If only you knew._

“Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;  
May your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.  
Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest...”

_Never. Never._

Perhaps she’ll wake up in the morning and tease him for reading “mushy stuff” and playing “music that sounds like it’s from a Joe Wright movie.” 

Perhaps she’ll say nothing at all. At least, not yet.

**Author's Note:**

> * John Douglas is the real-life FBI profiler who characters such as Will Graham, Holden Ford, and possibly even Malcolm Bright are based on.
> 
> Poems featured in this fanfiction:
> 
> -“Soonest Mended” – John Ashebury
> 
> -“Diving into the Wreck” – Adrienne Rich
> 
> -“Clenched Soul” – Pablo Neruda
> 
> -“Don’t Go Far Off” – Pablo Neruda
> 
> (S/o to @morningssofgold for the recommendations for Ashebury and Neruda’s works!)
> 
> “Soundtrack” for this fanfiction:
> 
> -The Less I Know the Better – Tame Impala
> 
> -Clair de Lune, L. 32 – Debussy
> 
> -Une Barque Sur L’ocean – Andre Laplante


End file.
